Been shooting here and there for Fitness Magazine and recently had a shoot working with them to document a workout session with a personal trainer and Masha Spaic who has been using the personal trainer to get in shape. It was a fun and pretty simple shoot with just my trusty Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II with my 24-70mm F/2.8, White Lighting 1600 strobe, Vagabond II battery pack. Little beauty dish for a softer light but nothing too technical here.

You can see the light stand and orange battery pack there on the left side. Instead of bringing a huge softbox and a bunch of reflectors and modifiers to this shoot I did a little research and checked out the space before I arrived(something you should all be doing). Turns out they have a huge white ceiling which would reflect my strobe quite nicely. I got there... thought about using my 7" reflector but it didn't give me the light coverage I was looking for so the beauty dish gave a huge spread and in seconds I had a 20'x80' softbox!! And because its an editorial shoot they didn't want any intense lighting, the more "natural" look works great for this.

Lil retouching here and there and you end up with something like this...

There isn't always a need for hyper conceptualized lighting and uuber aggressive styling... sometimes all you might need is a little extra light to capture what is really happening right then and there. No fake sky, dropped in extras, or completely faked lens flare... just a girl and a workout session. Every once in a while it's nice to just tone it down a little.

Any questions about what I did or how I did it... feel free to email me... James@JamesDouglasStudio.com

- JD

As always you guys can check out the WEBSITE here... www.JamesDouglasStudio.com

Follow me on TWITTER here... www.twitter.com/TheJamesDouglas

And LIKE something decent for once... www.Facebook.com/TheJamesDouglasStudio

Recently went back through some of my college stuff... Memory lane can be a very fun place to peruse every so often and this time was no exception. I had taken a photography based study abroad program in New Zealand my Junior year and I took waaaaaaay too many photos to deal with at the time. I pulled a couple really good ones out for my "show" and then boxed em up and put them in the closet. Well now having a decent scanner an intern and more powerful editing software I've been able to digitize them and catalog them into my archive properly. Here's a couple "weird" landscapes that I passed over the first time but have since rediscovered.

And to give you an idea of just how old these are... they were shot on Fuji Velvia 50!! Arguably the best slide film ever created and subsequently discontinued. Velvia 50 first came into the limelight as the "go-to" film for National Geographic photographers all over the world because of its unprecedented color accuracy and lack of grain. I was introduced to the stuff during an internship with Robb Kendrick, a national geographic shooter for over 20 years, in 2002. When I heard it was going to be discontinued I purchased some 20 cases of the stuff and have it stored in it's own little fridge behind my desk... where there may or may not be a case of PBR's as well. HA!

- JD

As always you guys can check out the WEBSITE here... www.JamesDouglasStudio.com

Follow me on TWITTER here... www.twitter.com/TheJamesDouglas

And LIKE something decent for once... www.Facebook.com/TheJamesDouglasStudio